Junior doctors' protests hit work at hospitals

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, JULY 30. The junior doctors' strike continued for the
eighth day on Monday. The doctors, in a bid to intensify their
agitation, picketed the departments of the Victoria Hospital,
Vani Vilas Hospital, Venkateshwara Institute of ENT, and Minto
Eye Hospital. Work in the departments was paralysed for half an
hour. At some of the departments work was not resumed.

The doctors' action led to confusion. Anguished patients, who had
been waiting in the queue for a long time for consultation and
treatment, expressed their anxiety and resentment at the absence
of doctors. Around 400 junior doctors participated in the
picketing.

The junior doctors are planning to bar all duty doctors and
medical officers from entering government hospitals on Tuesday.

Representatives of the junior doctors' association will extend
the ``parallel out-patient department'' to speciality departments
on Tuesday. The ``parallel OPD'' will be run opposite to each of
the OPD units by the doctors on strike, members of the junior
doctors' association say.

`Doctors demanding bribes': As the junior doctors' strike
continues, it is the patients who bear the brunt. Hospital
sources say that some of the duty doctors at the Victoria
Hospital, taking undue advantage of the situation, are demanding
bribes from the patients at the OPD for the treatment provided.

However, when contacted, Dr. R. Chandrashekhar, Medical
Superintendent of the hospital, denied that the duty doctors were
indulging in any malpractice.

He said that if patients had been asked to give bribes, or if
they had witnessed any malpractice being committed, they should
lodge a complaint with the Medical Superintendent.

A delegation of members of the junior doctors' association will
meet the Governor, Ms. V.S. Rama Devi, to submit a memorandum of
their demands, and request her to intervene in the negotiations
with the Government.